Authors: Joe Ducie
“Are you sure you want to see this,
son?” Detective Grey asked. He held up a strip of yellow police tape. Flashing blue
and red lights played tricks with the shadows beneath the tall trees that lined
the street running through the heart of Kings Park.
I stifled a yawn and nodded. “Your
boys pulled me out of a perfectly good drunken stupor at two in the morning and
dragged me down here. Let’s be having it, Detective.”
Grey shrugged and motioned me under
the cordon past two uniformed officers standing guard. The grass underfoot was
soft and wet, and a low fog hung in pale wisps a few inches above the ground,
mixed with the taste of lavender and wildflowers. Kings Park at night was well
lit, but that only served to ignite the mist with an eerie glow.
I followed Grey along a meandering
path next to rows of native flora, banksias and bottlebrush, planted as a
natural barrier against the steep fall away to our left onto Mounts Bay Road.
Built on a ridge a few hundred feet above Perth, Kings Park was the largest
inner-city park in the world. The Swan River disappeared into the night far
below, bordered by the Kwinana Freeway and a steady stream of headlights, even
at this early hour.
All in all, a very odd spot for a
bit of late-night murder.
Digital camera flashes fought a war
with the red and blue emergency lights for the shadows. I was always mindful of
the dark and what could be hiding in its inky folds. The police had set up tall
halogen lamps along the path, bathing the grass in bright, artificial light.
Detective Grey’s shadow cut away from his body behind him and to the right,
across the ground.
I looked at my feet, at something
that wasn’t there. It was not something other people generally noticed, but I
cast no shadow. I’d traded it for some magic beans and a jar of snake oil some
five years ago.
Past shenanigans...
Grey stopped me at a desk set up on
the path. He made me put on latex gloves and, over my leather shoes, disposable
booties.
“Do not touch anything,” he said.
Ahead, a group of people were
kneeling around what I assumed was a corpse lying under the boughs of a
massive, gnarled oak tree. Or from the scant details I’d gleaned on the ride
over, what was left of a corpse. The forensic folk were geared out head-to-toe
in white bodysuits and facemasks, but one woman stood apart, in just gloves and
booties like Grey and myself.
The senior detective cut a careful
path between two sets of small yellow cones—what I assumed was a cleared area,
safe to walk.
“Declan Hale, this is my partner,
Detective Annie Brie. She’s in charge of this investigation. Annie, Declan
Hale.”
I met her eyes and felt something
wonderful shiver through me—ice trickling down my spine, a touch of ecstasy for
the soul—and for a moment was at a loss for words. My Will, a font in my mind
that tapped a deep ocean of universal power, surged through my being and
reached toward this woman.
I stifled a gasp and shuddered,
putting a tight leash on the power threatening to explode through every pore in
my body. I’d only ever felt like this once before—as the Everlasting Oblivion
tore my shadow away in Atlantis. The feeling dissipated, and I regained my
focus, twice as hungover.
Brie was a tall woman with a sharp
jaw and straight black hair that framed her face. A young face—I’d put her in
her late twenties, just a few years older than me. She was Asian but perhaps on
only one side of the family. Her skin was pale, and the puffiness around her
light green eyes suggested she had been fast asleep not too long ago.
She offered me her hand. “Nice
waistcoat, Declan Hale.”
We shook. “Thank you, Detective
Annie Brie. I think I’m going to like you.”
“Where are we at, Annie?” Grey
asked.
Brie held my gaze another few
moments before turning to her partner. “Forensics confirmed just the one
victim, Sam, but given the mess, it was hard to tell. Are we sure he should be
seeing this?” She shrugged a thumb my way.
“It’s got his name written all over
it,” Grey muttered. His smile looked skeletal and grim in the artificial light.
“Show him.”
Brie took a gentle hold of my wrist.
“Step where I step, Mr. Hale.”
She led me through a throng of
faceless men and women, masked and clinically clean, and to the edge of the
pathway that veered around the mighty oak tree. Scrawled in blood and entrails
along one of the large concrete slabs was a message.
:)
The game is afoot, Declan Hale. Get it?
A FOOT! Ha-ha-haar… LONG LIVE THE IMMORTAL KING!
:(
Well, that settled it. This murder
was tied to Forget, to the mythical realms of story, possibly to Ascension City
itself, and my life as an exiled Knight Infernal. The problem with that, of
course, was that it didn’t narrow down the field of possible suspects one bit.
No. Instead of one world to hide in, whoever—or whatever—had done this had
millions. Next to the message was a human foot, ivory-blue, severed raggedly at
the ankle. A sharp shaft of white bone, snapped at the shin, protruded from the
break.
The game is a foot, indeed.
I looked away from the message and
back at Detective Brie. “That’s my name.”
“Yes.”
“I take it I’m the only Declan Hale
in Perth, which is why you pulled me out of bed?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the rest of the body?”
Sam Grey clapped me on the shoulder.
“Look up, son.”
I looked up. Various floodlights
were positioned under the long, reaching boughs of the oak tree, illuminating the
dark canopy. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, but when they did, I
spotted something gruesome.
A head, eyes gouged and mouth caught
in a final scream, hung pierced through the neck on one of the low-hanging
branches.
“Huh…” I said.
Now that I saw it, I couldn’t look
away. Brutally severed and bloody pieces of a man hung in the tree, as if he
had exploded and the many branches had played catch. His torso, bruised and
slick with blood, had been forced open and excavated. Whoever this poor bastard
had been, someone—
something?
—had removed his heart.
The missing heart rang a bell in the
back of my mind, but I couldn’t place the chime, and I was being watched far
too closely to conduct any Willful forensics.
“You think I did this?”
Nothing human
did this.
The detectives stared at me, faces
blank.
“What?”
“Have you seen a lot of dead bodies
before, Mr. Hale?” Brie asked.
Did that deserve a lie? What was “a
lot”? Crimson fields littered with enough dead that not even fire could cleanse
the earth? A forest of bamboo that grew red because of all the blood the ground
had absorbed? Oceans of innocents cut down in a war that spanned not only
worlds but universes? A war I’d ended at the bloody, genocidal point of a
crystal sword. The Roseblade.
I shrugged. “Declan, please. And one
or two. You know, at funerals.”
Grey grunted and gestured at the
remains in the tree. “Only this didn’t seem to bother you very much. Don’t
think I’ve ever seen anyone so calm at a murder scene, especially one this
ghastly.”
“I’m doing my best to ward off a
well-earned but inevitable hangover, Detective.” I pressed my fingers against
my eyelids. “And trying very hard not to throw up the delicious steak I had at
Paddy’s Pub last night, on Sugar Lane near Riverwood Plaza, where I was until
closing time at midnight—drinking and not committing murder.”
Brie jotted all that down in a
little blue notebook. “No one’s accusing you of anything, Mr. Hale.”
Yet
.
“We’ll check your alibi, of course, but I guess you know why we called you out
here tonight.”
“You’re the only Declan Hale in
town,” Grey said. “And we were worried that this—” he gestured to the mess of
blood and guts. “—was perhaps all that was left of you.”
“You have any enemies, Mr. Hale?”
Brie asked.
Well…
“Declan, please. No, not that I know of,
Detective. I just run a bookshop and keep to myself, mostly.” An untrue truth.
A
deceptive truth, Detective.
“Hmm…” She placed a hand on her hip
and offered me half a smile. “You sure? Nothing I should know about? Have you
received any threatening letters or text messages recently? Things like that
could be related.”
“Nope.” I reached into my pocket and
pulled out a battered old smartphone. Sophie had given it to me when she had
upgraded to something flashier. “Only had a phone about a month.”
Brie touched my forearm. I
suppressed another shiver. Something about this woman was… troublesome. Images
of Clare and, worse, Tal, flashed through my mind. Both women I had lost to the
fires of Forget. Same old mistakes, brand new ways.
Seconds become aeons
.
I thought of the Infernal Clock and rubbed at the crescent scar on my palm.
“Thing is, we don’t often see crimes
like this, with messages in blood and all this staging. Sure, they’re everyday
in the Hollywood movies and cop shows, but in the real world… rarely, if ever.
For the killer to bother, and to name you, suggests a personal stake in the
whole affair.”
“I wish I could help.”
“Can you?” Grey asked.
What could I offer? Nothing they’d
believe—not without dragging them across universes to Ascension City, perhaps
to the heart of the Fae Palace itself, where my brother ruled as king over an
army of supremely powerful beings capable of warping and distorting the fabric
of reality. No, that would not be helpful.
“Well, although it’s a play on words
given the staging of your victim’s feet, the words in the message are actually
referencing a Sherlock Holmes story.” I cleared my throat. “‘Come, Watson,
come! The game is afoot.’ It’s a literary reference. Your killer is well read.”
Again, Brie jotted all this down,
and, again, that didn’t serve to narrow the suspect pool one bit. The realm of
Forget, entire worlds suspended along the Story Thread as if they were a
necklace of fine jewels, existed for the well-read. “Anything else?”
Something was nagging at me in the
back of my mind. That bell was still ringing, but I couldn’t quite place the
sound. A sound that made me think of my old grandfather, locked away on
Starhold. This was a message for me, from someone or something in Forget, and I
was missing the point; of that I was sure. Perhaps it was the storm clouds on
the horizon, the hangover, clouding my judgment.
I looked up again into the spooky
tree. “Where are the… innards?”
“I’m sorry?” Brie said.
“The man’s organs are missing, as far
as I can tell. His heart, at the very least.”
“We’re searching for them,” Grey
said. “But it looks as if whoever did this either killed him somewhere else and
left some parts behind or killed him here and took some parts with him.” He
paused and stroked his chin. “The blood guys believe, given the spatter
patterns on the tree and grass, that he was… pulled apart here. The killer took
the heart, Mr. Hale. God knows why.”
“Hmm… I’m sorry I can’t be of more
help.” And my stomach was doing back flips. Curse that delicious scotch. “Do
you think I could head home now before I mess up your crime scene?”
That was a poor joke, and no one
laughed.
“Come with me,” Grey said. “We’ll
need you to sign a statement before you leave.”
“Okay.” I stepped away from the bloody
message and gave Brie a parting wave. “It was a pleasure, Detective Annie
Brie.”
She tilted her head. “I’ll be seeing
you again, I’m sure.”
I tried for a smile that fell
somewhere between tired and lonely. “Lucky me.”
Before we left the park, I was
dragged into a command tent to give a signed statement about my whereabouts the
previous evening as well as what I’d said and done at the crime scene. It was
all very proper and by the book. As dawn crept over the horizon, Grey called it
a night and pulled me along with him. I sat dozing in the passenger seat of his
car as he drove me home just after five in the morning.
He didn’t speak on the way, and I
didn’t invite conversation. Falling in and out of sleep, I dreamt of pink fire
and crimson war.
Aeons become seconds...
The old motto of the Knights
Infernal wouldn’t stop rattling around my head.
Grey dropped me off out the back of
Riverwood Plaza, a tiny, quiet cobblestoned street home to a slew of small
businesses, including my bookshop, which I lived in and above. A haven of sorts
for those of us cast into exile and down on our miserable luck.
“We’ll most likely be in touch, Mr.
Hale.” Grey offered his hand. His grip was firm, calloused. “We’ve got your
number.”